3Ô JOHN EEADE : 



a word. The Proto-Medic tribes, whose tougue was Ural-Altaic, and the Proto- Armenians, 

 who were of Aryan affinity, subsequently borrowed the Assyrian syllabaries, and the 

 latter have left memorials of themselves in the mounmeuts and inscriptions of Lake Yan 

 and its neighbourhood." 



To the same race belonged the Hittites, whose empire rose to considerable power, and 

 who carried to Asia Minor the art and culture of Babylonia. Sei\lptures attesting their 

 greatness are Aisible in Cappadocia, Lycaonia, Phrygia and Lydia. Their sway ended 

 with the fall of Carchemish, B.C. *71'7. According to Professor Sayce, the Cypriote sylla- 

 bary was derived from the Hittite hieroglyphics, though other authors dispixte this view. 

 The syllabary in question is of considerable interest " as an example of an independent 

 graphic system, unrelated to the Semitic alphabet, which was rapidly advancing on the 

 path of alphabetic evolution at the time when it became extinct."' Professor Sayce says 

 that it was once in tise throughout Asia Minor. Conservative Cyprus alone retained it 

 into historical times and has given to it the name by which it is known to the learned of 

 the present day.^ The characters, at least fifty-seven in number, were solved, after long- 

 resisting decipherment, by the genius of the late George Smith, the distinguished Assyrian 

 scholar. Whether it was of Assyrian or of Hittite origin, it missed that tide which, 

 " taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." Not to BabA'lon or Carchemish, but to Tyre and 

 Sidon, was western civilization to be indebted for the boon of letters. But where did 

 the Phœnicians receive the impulse which urged them to the alphabetic goal ? Long 

 before the mythic, yet in one sense, most real, Cadmus set forth in his eventful quest for 

 Europa,^ the inhabitants of the Nile valley had learned to express in symbols what they 

 thought and said and saw and did. Thirty-five centuries ago, Mr. Taylor tells us, hiero- 

 glyphic writing was a venerable system of vast antiquity. Nay, even twenty-six centu- 

 ries further back, the pyramid-builders were able to record in that way the glories of their 

 reigns. Five hundred years still further into remote antiquity we may venture, confi- 

 dent that our search will not be in vain.' At that date, B.C. 4*700, was erected by king 

 Sent, of the second dynasty, a memorial to his grandson Shera, now in the Ashmolean 

 Museum, Oxford, which, though the oldest written record in existence, is of even greater 

 interest for the long list of unknown predecessors that it implies. Nor is that all. Far 

 off as it lies in the past, it already contains a germ of promise which later ingenuity 

 was to fructify into the supreme blessing of a true alphabet. Of the symbols that stand 

 for Sent's own name, within the distinctive cartouche, the hand and the waterline are 

 recognized as the very forefathers of two of our most important letters, N and D. Taylor 

 maintains indeed, that " from the times of the earliest known monuments, the hierogly- 

 phic writers possessed a sufficient number of true letters to enable them to write alpha- 

 betically." " 



A strong, united voice of tradition attributed to Phoenicia the honour of having bes- 



' Taylor's Alphabet, i. 46, 47; Sayce's Ancient Empires of tlie East, p. 213. The Persians doveloiied the 

 cuneiform into a system which deserved to be ranked as an alphabet; but, after being in voguo for about a century, 

 it was superseded by the Semitic characters. 



'' Taylor's Alphabet, ii. 117. 



= "The Inscriptions found at Hissarlik," by Prof. Sayce, in Api»ndix to Schliemann's Ilios. 



^ If the conjectures of some writers be correct, that quest was simply the East (Kedem) seeking the West (Ereb.) 



' The Alphabet, i. 56. '• Ibid., i. 68. 



